August 20, 2024
What’s Up with the JLARC Report on Virginia Schools?
And what do people mean when they say “changing to a student-based formula”?
Virginia’s state research agency (JLARC) did an important report in 2023 about how Virginia funds its schools — or, more to the point, how the state fails to adequately or equitably fund its schools. The good news is that, in the same report, JLARC provided a blueprint for how policymakers can improve the school funding formula — known as the Standards of Quality, or SOQs, not to be confused with the curriculum Standards of Learning, or SOLs — to make sure the state pays its fair share and every student, regardless of zip code, has the support they need to reach their full potential and thrive.
There’s 20 specific recommendations in the JLARC report for improving the school funding formula. Implementing most of those recommendations isn’t free — all told, the state would need to put in over $4 billion in additional support for K-12 students to put them all in place — but doing so is the right thing to do because Virginia students deserve a high-quality education.
Legislators made some progress this last legislative session: they implemented the recommendation to improve Virginia’s funding for students from low-income families by modernizing the data source that measures how many low-income students live in each community and provided an additional $371 million in funding for those schools serving low-income children. Yet there’s lots more recommendations that still need to be put into action!
JLARC also provided policymakers with five “policy options,” where they provided considerations for changing the funding formula but did not make a “recommendation.” This summer and fall, a joint subcommittee of legislators are tasked with examining those policy options and how to implement the recommendations.
About that student-based formula
There’s one policy option that’s gotten the most attention from policymakers, and it’s a big one. Virginia currently has a pretty complex funding formula that attempts to calculate how many teachers are needed for each group of students, how many other staff in a variety of roles are needed, salaries and benefits for all those different staff positions, extra costs for students with higher needs, etc. JLARC outlined the option of moving to a simpler funding formula that would provide more flexibility to local school divisions. Under that simpler model with more local control, the state would provide its share of a per-pupil amount and its share of additional funding (or “add-ons”) for a few groups of students who need more support to thrive (students from low-income families, English language learners, and students with disabilities). There would be a few additional adjustments under this proposal, including for regional differences in the cost of labor and the higher per-pupil costs faced by very small school divisions, but overall it would be a much less complex approach.
Did you know? Even a 10% increase in public education funding can lead to increased income earnings and a decreased risk of poverty for students later in life. Let’s make sure that all Virginia students have the tools they need to succeed.
The benefits of this simpler formula include that it would be easier for people to understand and that it would give more flexibility to local school boards and superintendents to spend money on what they see as the highest priorities. Of course, that’s also the downside from some perspectives – the state, which pays a big part of school costs, wouldn’t have as much say in exactly how that money is spent compared to the current formula that prescribes certain numbers of teachers and other staff positions for different student groups.
Would moving to a new type of formula provide more resources for students?
It depends! JLARC staff provided a sample student-based formula based mostly on actual typical costs in Virginia, and their version would increase state funding for schools. But the final outcome would be very dependent on what numbers are selected for the basic per-pupil funding amount, the add-ons for students who face greater barriers, and other variables.
Are you talking about the LCI? I don’t think the LCI is fair to us where I live.
The Local Composite Index (LCI) determines how much of school costs (standards of quality-determined costs) should be paid by the state and the local government based on the local community’s capacity to fund schools. It’s different from the Standards of Quality (SOQ), which determines how much overall funding students need in order to have a high-quality education (although, as JLARC showed, in practice the SOQ formula doesn’t live up to that standard). JLARC did include a recommendation and some policy options to improve the LCI, although they found that overall it’s working pretty well (unlike the SOQ formula). More information on those proposals is available here.
What’s next? What can I do?
Legislators are meeting this summer and fall to determine next steps on the JLARC report and whether to implement the policy options. If you want to learn more, contact us at The Commonwealth Institute or the Fund Our Schools coalition at fundourschoolsva.org.
Categories:
Budget & Revenue, Education
